


human

by icoulddothisallday



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, Antisemitism, Dehumanization, Hate Crimes, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Culture, Loss of Identity, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, of OCs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 17:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13151403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday
Summary: Bucky Barnes wakes believing he is agolemand learns to be human again surrounded by his people.





	human

**Author's Note:**

> So this started with a conversation about why the popular depiction of golems as monstrous is problematic. In Jewish lore, golems are creatures made of clay and brought to life through mysticism, with the purpose of protecting the Jewish people, especially from blood libel. I proposed the idea that Bucky wake up post-WS and believe that he's a golem. So that's this story. 
> 
> [tetrodotoxinb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB) enabled and beta'd.  
> Glossary of terms can be found at the end.

It is awake.

The sun is bright, the air cold. It lifts a hand. Its skin is brown and cracked, mud caked high in grooves and ridges. It lifts another hand. Its skin flakes away, dirt on the wind, back to the earth. _For dust you are, and to dust you shall return._

It rises.

The sun is bright, the air cold. It feels no pain.

This place could be any place. Water in the river flows by, a rush of sound.

For the first time in a long time, it has no mission. It is a hunk of clay, yet to be given purpose, yet to be given life. Broken images flash in its mind. _The man falls, bleeding. He hits the water and it dives after him, blood clouds its vision. Candles are lit in the dark, sitting in the window , a patch of light against snow._

It walks.

*

The mud that is its flesh peels away. People stare.

The images in its mind do not stop. _It bleeds. It kills. It hurts._ This does not trouble it, these images are inscribed deep in its flesh. For when it was made, its creators wrote its function to serve as a spine.

But the words must have been twisted, something has changed.

_It throws an arm around shoulders, its hands kind. It lifts a child. It stirs a soup pot. It rips the challa from its braid. It lights the shamash. It steps in front of a punch, protecting. A man smiles at him, straightening its tallit._

Red clay leaks from its nose. It is unmade.

It finds a quiet place and looks into the reflective window. With one finger, it inscribes the word _emet_ , carefully, one letter at a time. It is difficult to remember, it is difficult to do. It is the word that is meant to be there, it will protect against the lies in its head, it will make its purpose clear.

*

It is at home in the dark. It has walked a long way, now, and almost all the mud that is his flesh has gone, leaving something pale and weak beneath it, covered only by dark cloth. One hand glints in the streetlight. A weapon, it thinks, something given to it by its creators. Now the weapon has no purpose, just like it.

Behind a building, there is a puddle and dirt. It scoops up the mud and rubs it over the weakness of his limbs. It becomes itself again, returning to the earth from which it came.

*

When it stops walking, red clay covers its feet. Its body is weak and trembles. It finds that it must eat and stops behind a restaurant, where there is food left out. It eats until it is sated and walks again.

Its feet know where to go, for surely his creators were wise and wished him to return. But it walks to the places and it is not right, there are scars in its mind. Red clay seeps once more from its nose.

It climbs and climbs and climbs, shaking apart.

It lays itself down.

It closes its eyes.

*

On the second day it must find more earth to cake over its body. It scrapes _emet_ into its forehead and then once on each limb, because the lies still come. _It is small, it holds a woman’s hand. It is large, it presses close to a different woman. It eats food that is warm, it sleeps in a bed._

It lies.

It has purpose and nothing else, it is an extension of the will of his creator.

Its creator used it to hurt. To rip and tear and make people scream.

 _You are created in God’s image,_ a man says, _and God is good._

It is not good.

*

A woman screams. It wakes, it runs.

A man presses her against the wall, knife held to her side. Her tears wet the brick, she whispers to herself, words that ring in it ears, that shake in its brain. _Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu…_

It rips the man away. It uses the weapon, the metal that hides under clay. It smashes the man against the ground. The man bleeds. It looks like red clay. The man goes still.

The woman stares at him.

It shakes. Red clay runs from its ears.

It runs.

*

It doesn’t know why it stays here, only that the people and the sounds do not make its brain scream. It perches on its roof and watches them. It likes the children best, the little ones with dark curls and big smiles.

Most nights, it stays on the roof across from the school. The school is marked with the star of David, which burns bright in its vision. It is known, even deeper than the words of its spine, the orders of its creator.

The star on its weapon is wrong. It is red, like the blood its creators made him spill. It remembers the creator carving the orders into its flesh. It remembers screaming.

When it watches the school, the screams are quieter.

Then the men come. They come in the night. They come armed with paint.

The lines are bloody on the school, the lines make the world shake. It sees men and women starving, it sees bodies piled high. It sees _you are worth less than the dirt we walk on._

It is the dirt they walk on, and the children are worth much more than it. The children came from the earth, they will return to the earth, and they will return without pain, they will return without _this._

First, it makes the men scream. It tells them _not here, not ever again, this place is protected and you will not hurt them_ with his body, made of clay _._

It finds a towel and water sitting on someone’s steps. It scrubs until its clay flesh peels away, until the weakness beneath it breaks and reveals the red clay that it is made of. It is still scrubbing when dawn comes. With it comes a man.

He is old, his face lined with lines that suggest years of smiling. But when he walks up to the school and sees the swastikas it has not yet scrubbed away, the old man cries. He sees it before it can hide, sees the red clay and the _emet_ written on its flesh.

The old man takes off his jacket, bunches it up, dips it in the water and starts to scrub.

When the sun is up, the violence has been washed away.

It turns to go. The old man stops him with a hand on it’s hand.

He says, “Thank you.”

It does not speak. Words do not exist in the clay form of his mouth. It touches the man’s forehead, it traces _emet_ on the skin there.

It runs.

*

One day a week, the people gather. They sing and laugh and smile. It likes to watch. There are forces that would pick away at their happiness.

It thinks this is the new purpose. The words have been rewritten. It is to protect, like the stories of old. It thinks these people are made of the same earth as it. Its job is to wash away the hate on the walls of their schools and synagogues, to stop the people who hold knives up to their throats, to protect the houses their children live in.

The old man leaves a little package for it after the service each week, on the steps of the school that they washed together. _L’emet,_ it reads, _todah_ in letters foreign and familiar. Inside, there is always food and water. Sometimes, there is clothes and soap.

It has no need for those things, for it is a creature of earth and water. It leaves these things in alleys and under benches, where they will be found by humans who need them.

After it watches the men and women and children leave the service, after they return to their homes and light their braided candles, it goes to the river. In most places, the city rises from the river on concrete and steel limbs, but it knows the places to go now. There it packs the clay over itself, returns to the earth from which it has risen.

The mud will flake away again before the next _shabbas,_ revealing its false human form and leaving it weak, but it doesn’t like to be away from the people.

The people are its purpose.

*

The people start to know it. It doesn’t venture out in the day, only keeps a careful watch from its rooftop. But the people he protect in the night talk about it, and the old man tells the story — it hears him.

The people call him _emet_ and it is grateful.

*

On _shabbas_ it goes to get its package and the old man is waiting. It isn’t sure what do, so it waits in the shadows.

The old man waits too.

When the street is quiet, it ventures out. The old man smiles at it, greets it. He  says to it, “Come to meet Rabbi Shmuel.”

So it does.

It takes him to the synagogue. The rabbi is old and gray and looks as though he has laughed and cried in equal measure. It is the way faces are supposed to look, it thinks.

“He doesn’t speak,” the old man says and it startles. It is it. It is not he. It is the object called from the earth and brought to life with a single purpose. “But this is the man who protects us.”

It shakes its head.

Rabbi Shmuel is a short man who looks up at it from a crooked back. “You don’t protect us? Because Yakov says you washed the swastikas from our school. Adina says you protected her from rape. The Krausses say you stopped a man who broke into their house.”

It shrugs, for it cannot speak and cannot say _yes, it has done those things,_ but _no I am not man._

Rabbi Shmuel mumbles and talks to himself, a tripping storm of thought that feels somehow familiar. “Can you write?”

It nods. Its hand curls into a fist, it scrapes its thumbnail over its palm, carefully inscribing each letter. _Emet._ It is provided a paper and pen. Words are harder than anticipated and it drifts between languages, but these men understand.

_It is not a man. It is golem, made to protect._

The two men read its words, they exchange a long look. Finally, Rabbi Shmuel asks, “Who made you to protect us?”

 _Its purpose was rewritten,_ it writes, _it chooses these people._

Yakov and Rabbi Shmuel study the words for a long time. It waits. These men are its men, and it will listen to them.

“Come. Eat. There will be talk in the morning,” Rabbi Shmuel says, waving a hand.

It follows.

*

Rabbi Shmuel wants it to stay in the house, but it cannot. It cannot sleep in the bed or bathe in the shower.

It eats the food it is given. The food makes lies appear in its head. It sees _it is a boy and it has a mama who says “eat!” but it hides its extra food in a handkerchief, there is another boy who is hungrier._ It sees _mama can’t we eat yet_ . It sees _rations_ and _wish I had my mama’s matza balls right about now._

It leaves the house. It goes to the river. It writes _emet emet emet emet emet emet._

*

It goes back to Rabbi Shmuel.

*

“You think you are a golem?” The Rabbi asks. This time, Yakov and Rabbi Shmuel are joined by Ezra and David and they all sit in the circle. The men wear _tallisim_ on their shoulders. There are books piled high on the table.

It nods.

It writes _It is made of the earth to serve a purpose._

Ezra says, “Aha! But are you made of the same earth or different earth than us?”

_The same._

“If we are of the same earth,” Ezra asks, leaning in, eyes serious yet dancing, “What makes you separate from us?”

 _It is not man,_ it writes. It does not understand.

“But man was made of the earth,” Yakov says, “And then _HaShem_ breathed life into man and made him whole. Were you not created? Were you not given breath?”

It shakes its head. The words hurt inside, deep where its spine is, deeper still than that. They make its clay shake and crumble. It does not understand.

_Not as man._

“Why not? What makes you different than us?”

It has been three days since it returned to the river. It can see the false-flesh, the fake-life. It shakes its head. It does not understand.

 _it is a boy and there’s another boy and they play catch until the other boy can’t breathe and it has to run for help._ It sees _a little girl with dark curls sitting next to it as it reads._ It sees _lying back to back to with a man, warmth radiating._ It sees i _tself made of flesh._ It sees _itself bleed._

Red clay leaks from its nose. It digs its nail into its arm, until the red clay of his core is revealed, it makes the word _emet._

The men go still. Rabbi Shmuel has tears on his face.

It does not understand.

*

Rabbi Shmuel has a wife and three daughters. A son, he says, who is in Israel. The eldest girl, Amit, wraps its arm in soft cloth bandages, though it is not necessary. Devorah cooks and insists it eat, though it has already eaten that day.

The littlest, Liora, sits across the table and stares at it. She has dark hair that puffs in a cloud around her face and dark, curious eyes.

It knew a girl like her once, it thinks.

She comes around the table and holds out her toy, a stuffed bear with black button eyes. It wears a little helmet and costume with a star on it, like the man that it had fought. It had made the man bleed. The man had said things that made no sense. The man would not hurt it back, would not protect himself.

It takes the toy.

It’s soft in its hands.

*

It meets with the men every morning. They read from many books together, from _Nevi’im_ and _Ketuvim,_ from talmud and torah. They speak of the _Mishna_ and _Mitzvot_.

They do not tell it that is is a man.

But they ask questions. So many questions, which squirm into its mind. Sometimes those questions hurt, sometimes they make it hollow and numb.

“But what makes a person human?” Rabbi Shmuel asks.

 _Person has choice_ it writes.

“But didn’t you choose?” Ezra asks. “Didn’t you choose to protect us?”

It goes very very still.

Once it has creators that gave it purpose. Creators that built it, that gave it the weapon, that made it strong enough to do their bidding, that built it from clay. For a long time, it followed the purpose set by the creators.

And then it stopped. It _chose._

The men are quiet as it leaves. They never make it stay. The never make it do anything.

*

For shabbas, Yakov says, “Come to shul. You are welcome there.”

It stands in the back and listens. The prayer and song is familiar, the weave and dance of praying bodies is comforting. It closes its eyes and remembers.

Before it was created, before the clay was packed into the mold, and the secret words were said over its body, it had a family. A mother a father a sister a brother. And they welcomed the shabbas together, candlelight on the table. Sometimes, another boy came with his mother. Their hair glowed underneath the dancing flames. It would meet the boy after church, the boy still all dressed, and they would go to play in the park.

Liora finds it. She puts her tiny hand in its weapon. She is not afraid. She knows it will protect her.

*

It begins to dream. It used to sleep and see only blood and clay, but now images come to it. The boy becomes the man, and it is there. They touch in ways it does not understand. The man fell in the river, words on his lips that didn’t make any sense. Calling it friend, saying he knew it _before._ The man says things that make the clay crumble, make something raw and human pour out.

When it wakes, it’s bleeding from its ears.

*

“What do you remember about before?” Yakov asks one morning in Rabbi Shmuel’s office. This morning there is food as they bend over their books and look for answers.

It writes.

_The creators hurt it to make it, there was blood and it hurt, and they told it what it was supposed to do and there were days and days and days of dark and it asked and nobody answered it and they said kill and it did_

_It was cold, it was always cold_

_It fought_

_Alone? With a man? The man was always close, before the creators and the pain and the dark and the cold. The man called it a name. The man treated it well._

_It loves the man._

*

It leaves and goes to the river and does not go back for many many days. But it worries about the people in the night, it worries there is hate being inscribed on its people.

When it returns to Rabbi Shmuel and the others, a new man has joined them. The man is familiar — the man fell into the river, the man bled, the man fought with it and beside it, the man was a boy before.

The man is   _it was not always a golem._ The man is _you chose._ The man is _people choose._

The man stands, his body shaking. He tucks his hands in pockets. It stares.

“I —” the man starts. He swallows and looks away. “I know you don’t remember me, Bucky. Rabbi Shmuel says you don’t think you’re — .” Rabbi Shmuel shakes his head and the man stops. He looks up again. His eyes are blue and shining. “I’m Steve. And I’m here for you, okay? Whatever you need, whatever that looks like.”

It lifts a hand. Its bleeding from its nose.

It makes a sound.

*

Steve rents an apartment. It’s on the top floor and he leaves the window open for it. It mostly sits outside, on the fire escape, where it can see inside and also protect its people.

At first, Steve comes to the meetings in the mornings. But he always cries, so he stops coming. Instead, he’s always waiting for it outside when it finishes. If it needs to leave, Steve doesn’t stop it. When it stays, they walk the streets together. Steve teaches it signs, so it doesn’t need to write to speak.

When no one is around, late at night, it makes more sounds. They don’t sound like words, not yet.

On Friday nights, when it goes to Rabbi Shmuel’s house, Steve comes with. He plays with Liora and talks about books with Amit and argues politics with Devorah and Rabbi Shmuel. He sits next to it and is warm.

It remembers.

*

It goes inside. Steve is in the kitchen. He hums, badly. Steve doesn’t realize for a couple minutes, but when he does he smiles so big it lights up the whole room.

Yesterday, it went to the river. It sat there for a long time looking at its hands. It thinks. Before it was a golem, it was a man. I thinks maybe it can choose to be a man again.

 _Can I take a bath_ , it signs to Steve.

Steve blinks, looking surprised. He carefully dries his hands on a towel and nods slowly. “Of course you can, Buck. Lemme show you where the bathroom is.”

The bathroom is small, but there’s a tub in it like the one it remembers, with clawed feet and a deep basin. Steve fills the tub with water that steams the air up.

It pulls away the black coverings, which are tattered. It stands naked in the room. When Steve turns, his face does something strange that it doesn’t understand.

 _Stay,_ it requests.

Steve nods.

It steps into the water. The clay floats away. It sits. It looks at its pale, human limbs.

“Can I help?” Steve asks, voice low. It nods.

Steve lifts a washcloth and tenderly wipes it over its shoulders.

“Maybe,” it says, words cracked and rough from disuse. Steve goes still. “I can be human again.”

It has been practicing those words.

Steve relaxes, he resumes careful motions on its back. “You never really stopped, pal.”

It closes its eyes.

It’s warm. It’s clean. Steve is here.

*

Sometimes he forgets. He goes to the river and packs on the clay, he scrapes _emet_ into his flesh, he won’t come inside for days and days.

Steve is patient. Every time, he fills the bath with hot water and washes away the dirt, revealing Bucky again. Afterwards, Steve will hold him until he is sure of himself. And Bucky will think _my frame was not concealed from you, when I was shaped in a hidden place. Your eyes saw my unformed limbs, and in time they were formed, to the very last one._

In the morning, they will walk to the synagogue.

Steve will hold his hand as Bucky walks among his people, one of them.

_fin._

 

**Author's Note:**

> For dust you are, and to dust you shall return - a quote from the torah (old testament) about the creation of man. It is the only place where the word _golem_ is used in the torah. 
> 
> my frame was not concealed from you, when I was shaped in a hidden place. Your eyes saw my unformed limbs, and in time they were formed, to the very last one - a quote from Ketuvim in a prayer praising God for the creation of man, the only place where the word _golem_ is used in the Tanakh. 
> 
> Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu… - the four first words of the shema, a critical Jewish prayer
> 
>  
> 
> emet - truth, legend holds that this word is inscribed on the forehead of a golem to bring it alive. When you erase the first letter, you are left with _met which means death. This is a how a golem is killed._  
>  HaShem - literally "the name," one of many Hebrew names for God  
> Ketuvim - "Writings," the third book of the Tanakh, a Jewish holy book  
>  _l'emet, todah_ \- for emet, thank you  
>  Mishna - Jewish oral law  
> Mitzvot - 613 laws that Jews are expected to follow (this is actually a lot more complicated than this, google if you're interested in knowing more or message me or something).  
> Nevi’im - "Prophets," the second book of the Tanakh, a Jewish holy book  
> shabbas - the Jewish sabbath or day of rest  
> tallisim - prayer shawls, traditional garments worn during prayer
> 
> a note on Rabbi Shmuel and the other men: In Judaism and in Jewish culture learning and questioning is critical. You may have heard jokes about how Jews love to argue - this is not without truth, for we are encouraged to question and learn through questioning. Interpretation and reinterpretation of holy text is paramount to religious life, and this has a huge impact on the culture of Jews. 
> 
> a note on Jewish culture and identity: Judaism has many forms and is practiced in many ways around the world. Culture and identity varies widely. This is based on my experience and my knowledge and should not be taken to be representative.
> 
> Come hang with me on [tumblt](https://icoulddthisallday.tumblr.com)


End file.
